Yes. Yes we do - Or at least we could with some sensible investments. Our (the US) power transmission infrastructure needs an overhaul - I'd rather spend tax $$ on that than several of the things they're going toward now. But, if we adopted sensible energy policies, there's no good reason that we can't have electricity to just throw away.
I'll agree that throwing $$ away in one place is no justification for throwing it away in another, but a better power (and data?) transmission system nationwide with upgraded power production (nuclear, wind, cleaner coal, etc) IMO is not remotely a waste.
According to this article (posted today), a number of UK ISPs have now blocked access to the wikipedia page featuring that album cover. Way to go, El Lobo, you tipped them off.
I think that your definition of "best" may differ from industry's. I'm inferring that you're defining "best" as "highest quality". From a corporate stand-point, that's dead wrong. Making the highest quality product is the best decision iff it maximizes your profit. Otherwise it's an ego-stroking mistake.
Think of it this way - Would you rather have half of the profits made from Windows or Linux? McDonald's or Red Robin*? Titanic or Serenity?
Ask the CEOs from Nintendo, Sony, and MS whether they want to have the best console on the market or the one that makes the most money. If they're telling the truth, they'll modify your definition of "best".
*Sorry - I couldn't think of a great burger joint that everyone would know off of the top of my head - Red Robin is decent, lower profit than McDonald's, and well known, but far from the best burger around. If you're ever in Albuquerque, grab a burger and a beer from Chama River Brewing Company just off I-25 & Jefferson. I have no affiliation with them, but they provide awesome burgers & beer.
don't presume because casual gamers are buying the Wii that it is somehow superior to the other 2 consoles.
Selling the most units / making the most profit does indeed make it the best console (assuming that those statistics are accurate - I haven't checked sales nor profit per sale and just inferred them from your post). Do you really think that Sony/Microsoft are aiming at some idealistic game-platform utopia rather than just trying to make as much as they can with their consoles? They put out the product that they thought would be the most successful monetarily and are trying to compete. Nintendo found a largely untapped market and nailed it. The best console, by Nintendo's, Sony's, and Microsoft's definition, is the console that makes the most money. So, according to your accusations, yes - Nintendo made the best console, despite failing to appeal to hard-core gamers.
Nintendo just t-bagged all of its fans and customers with The Wii.
If I can expect a t-bagging with every purchase, then I will be a satisfied paying customer. If identifying its customers needs and meeting them at a price that's mutually acceptable is somehow wrong, why would any major brand want to be right?
Yes, but when you deliver your product to the people paying you to write it, reading/., forums, etc are seen as harmless, probably unpaid (or included in operating overhead) breaks. When you code in an Easter egg, and it's discovered, you need to be able to explain to your customer why they paid you to add unrequested silly content to their application.
That assumes of course that you're working on a funded project intended for delivery and not a speculative project intended for market/free release.
For the cells, work areas, cafeteria, medical area, etc, you're probably right. If it's planned into the construction it's probably only a minor additional expense - And that would likely solve most of the problem.
However, passively blocking the exercise yard is going to be tough... I think out there you're going to have to go active or just hope that the guards will notice if somebody out there is mysteriously crouching and talking to their hand.
[Disclaimer - The only prison I've seen close-up is Alcatraz and I learned most of what I know of prison anatomy from movies & TV. They do have big out-door areas, right?]
Our local cinema already blocks cell-phone signals. Active blocking violates FCC regs. Passive blocking is just fine per my understanding. Phones work in the lobby but drop to 0 bars as soon as you get to the hallway leading to the screens.
The logistics of retro-fitting an entire prison complex with a passive blocking cage may be prohibitively difficult, though. In the theater, it was a design feature when it was built a couple of years ago.
And the worst thing is that many of those so-called libertarians favor the government in the current individual freedom issues we're having (eg: the Patriot Act) and when it comes to 'impose freedom' to other nations.
Libertarians are committed to the belief that individuals, and not states or groups of any other kind, are both ontologically and normatively primary; that individuals have rights against certain kinds of forcible interference on the part of others; that liberty, understood as non-interference, is the only thing that can be legitimately demanded of others as a matter of legal or political right; that robust property rights and the economic liberty that follows from their consistent recognition are of central importance in respecting individual liberty; that social order is not at odds with but develops out of individual liberty; that the only proper use of coercion is defensive or to rectify an error; that governments are bound by essentially the same moral principles as individuals; and that most existing and historical governments have acted improperly insofar as they have utilized coercion for plunder, aggression, redistribution, and other purposes beyond the protection of individual liberty.
Methinks you're confusing Libertarians with some other group. Either that or deeply confused.
This plan should be fine as long as we don't have any incompetent, egotistical, anal-retentiveness cowards who are in charging replacing faulty drive-plates in the ship's engine system. I mean what could go wrong?
Even that would be OK if we made sure that coward had a partner to look over his shoulder. Of course, if that partner were to somehow get himself tossed into stasis for a ship infraction leaving the incompetent coward to do the job himself, who knows where it would lead? The only hope then would be self-insemination of the last surviving human or reassembly of the dead by nano-bots. And that would just be silly.
Sorry - I should have credited that. Short story by Isaac Asimov dealing with the end of life everywhere written in 1956. Here's the wiki for anyone who just wants the gist without reading all 5 or 6 pages: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Last_Question
i mean, why should it make any difference how many people share a common delusion. a fallacy is a fallacy regardless of how many people believe in the fallacy. should medical diagnostic criteria pay tribute to political correctness? whether you were socialized with irrational, factually unsupported beliefs by 5 people or 500 people, it's still a delusion. factual reality isn't dictated by majority opinion.
The problem is that "factual reality" is tough to pin down in some cases. It hasn't been that long ago that the idea that the Earth revolved around the Sun was only accepted by mentally ill subculture. It turns out (at least as far as we know) that the few were right and the many were wrong - The facts were simply too confusing and complicated to understand. If you told me that everything in the universe was comprised of weird little vibrating strings, I may think that you were mentally ill. But there are a bunch of people much more ingrained in the world of physics than I am that are actively pursuing that theory.
Sometimes common delusions are harmless (or even helpful - I'm convinced that if the world's religions had never been a benefit to society, they wouldn't exist). So if "factual reality isn't dictated by majority opinion", what is it determined by? Some super-smart elected committee? You? Me? Every man for himself? Do tell.
Stupid useful thing to do with a doomsday device? Easy. Give it a catchy title like "Positronic ray, capable of emitting pure anti-matter" and use it as a premise to encourage Jane Fonda to open a movie by doing a zero-G strip show. Then, get a band to name themselves after the inventor. That seems much more productive than destroying the world and it gives back to society more than making huge ransom demands. Everyone wins.
Indeed - Another soul has received his vin-dit and will soon become a part of our karass, with Cat's Cradle as our wampeter. Sure, Bokonism may be largely comprised of foma, but it's a welcome escape from the slashdot granfaloon.
Well put. Persecuted, exploited, abused, but embraced within the cult and ridiculed, untrusted, and almost unwelcome outside the cult. That's gotta be a helluva way to live.
With only a pair of sentences, you made me pity Tom Cruise. Thank you.
I would recommend strongly against drinking anything kept cold by Ice-9, although it may keep your corpse looking its best.
On a related topic, the main redeeming value of The Recruit was that it turned me on to Cat's Cradle (they named their ludicrous super-infect-60-hz-power-turn-your-blender-against-you virus "Ice-9"). It was written 14 years before I was born and may have slipped by me otherwise.
Strangely, although mentioned on the Cat's Cradle wiki, The Recruit is missing from the Ice-9 In Popular Culture section. If I was more motivated, I'd add it...
Yep, then it melts and you go nine months without being able to use it. I think the analogy is perfect.
And yet people still build ski lodges/lifts because they believe (often correctly) that the informal, erratic, chaotic, unplanned snow will be sufficient to make it worth-while in spite of the dry-spells.
... to believe you're being persecuted & suppressed--just look at Tom Cruise.
Actually, if you look at how Scientology treats its members (especially the really valuable or potentially embarrassing ones), in all likelihood Tom Cruise is being persecuted & suppressed.
Bouncing a beam off of the lunar laser ranger demonstrates only that we (or more likely the underlings working for the alien overlords known as the Illuminati) planted the device on the moon. It does not prove that it was placed there during the supposed "Apollo" mission nor does it prove that man has ever escaped Earth's orbit or that the moon is in fact real rather than a sophisticated projection on the outside of our fishbowl. There's actually a documentary where OJ Simpson demonstrates how a similar hoax could be pulled off for a manned Mars landing.
(May the gods help us if anyone interprets the above as anything other than a goofy attempt at humor.)
Seriously, though, good for the Indians. Considering the $$ that the US has shot into space (development, production, etc), and the continued global interest in space exploration, this could be a very valuable market for them.
Slashdot Mirror
Yes. Yes we do - Or at least we could with some sensible investments. Our (the US) power transmission infrastructure needs an overhaul - I'd rather spend tax $$ on that than several of the things they're going toward now. But, if we adopted sensible energy policies, there's no good reason that we can't have electricity to just throw away.
I'll agree that throwing $$ away in one place is no justification for throwing it away in another, but a better power (and data?) transmission system nationwide with upgraded power production (nuclear, wind, cleaner coal, etc) IMO is not remotely a waste.
According to this article (posted today), a number of UK ISPs have now blocked access to the wikipedia page featuring that album cover. Way to go, El Lobo, you tipped them off.
I think that your definition of "best" may differ from industry's. I'm inferring that you're defining "best" as "highest quality". From a corporate stand-point, that's dead wrong. Making the highest quality product is the best decision iff it maximizes your profit. Otherwise it's an ego-stroking mistake.
Think of it this way - Would you rather have half of the profits made from Windows or Linux? McDonald's or Red Robin*? Titanic or Serenity?
Ask the CEOs from Nintendo, Sony, and MS whether they want to have the best console on the market or the one that makes the most money. If they're telling the truth, they'll modify your definition of "best".
*Sorry - I couldn't think of a great burger joint that everyone would know off of the top of my head - Red Robin is decent, lower profit than McDonald's, and well known, but far from the best burger around. If you're ever in Albuquerque, grab a burger and a beer from Chama River Brewing Company just off I-25 & Jefferson. I have no affiliation with them, but they provide awesome burgers & beer.
Highly publicized != "number one".
Appealing to a wide range of audiences != Unenjoyable by 31337 players just looking for a good time.
Seriously dude, what's with the hate? Do you hate ice cream because "Old people and young or "special" children" enjoy it?
don't presume because casual gamers are buying the Wii that it is somehow superior to the other 2 consoles.
Selling the most units / making the most profit does indeed make it the best console (assuming that those statistics are accurate - I haven't checked sales nor profit per sale and just inferred them from your post). Do you really think that Sony/Microsoft are aiming at some idealistic game-platform utopia rather than just trying to make as much as they can with their consoles? They put out the product that they thought would be the most successful monetarily and are trying to compete. Nintendo found a largely untapped market and nailed it. The best console, by Nintendo's, Sony's, and Microsoft's definition, is the console that makes the most money. So, according to your accusations, yes - Nintendo made the best console, despite failing to appeal to hard-core gamers.
Nintendo just t-bagged all of its fans and customers with The Wii.
If I can expect a t-bagging with every purchase, then I will be a satisfied paying customer. If identifying its customers needs and meeting them at a price that's mutually acceptable is somehow wrong, why would any major brand want to be right?
Keanu barada nikto?
Yes, but when you deliver your product to the people paying you to write it, reading /., forums, etc are seen as harmless, probably unpaid (or included in operating overhead) breaks. When you code in an Easter egg, and it's discovered, you need to be able to explain to your customer why they paid you to add unrequested silly content to their application.
That assumes of course that you're working on a funded project intended for delivery and not a speculative project intended for market/free release.
2astronauts1cup?
In zero-G no less. Ugh.
For the cells, work areas, cafeteria, medical area, etc, you're probably right. If it's planned into the construction it's probably only a minor additional expense - And that would likely solve most of the problem.
However, passively blocking the exercise yard is going to be tough... I think out there you're going to have to go active or just hope that the guards will notice if somebody out there is mysteriously crouching and talking to their hand.
[Disclaimer - The only prison I've seen close-up is Alcatraz and I learned most of what I know of prison anatomy from movies & TV. They do have big out-door areas, right?]
Besides, most white collar crimes require too much effort to be even worth your time.
Prision is full of criminals that don't agree with you
As are many of the nicer resorts/penthouses around the globe...
Our local cinema already blocks cell-phone signals. Active blocking violates FCC regs. Passive blocking is just fine per my understanding. Phones work in the lobby but drop to 0 bars as soon as you get to the hallway leading to the screens.
The logistics of retro-fitting an entire prison complex with a passive blocking cage may be prohibitively difficult, though. In the theater, it was a design feature when it was built a couple of years ago.
And the worst thing is that many of those so-called libertarians favor the government in the current individual freedom issues we're having (eg: the Patriot Act) and when it comes to 'impose freedom' to other nations.
Umm, what?
From the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy and quoted on the Wikipedia Libertarian page:
Libertarians are committed to the belief that individuals, and not states or groups of any other kind, are both ontologically and normatively primary; that individuals have rights against certain kinds of forcible interference on the part of others; that liberty, understood as non-interference, is the only thing that can be legitimately demanded of others as a matter of legal or political right; that robust property rights and the economic liberty that follows from their consistent recognition are of central importance in respecting individual liberty; that social order is not at odds with but develops out of individual liberty; that the only proper use of coercion is defensive or to rectify an error; that governments are bound by essentially the same moral principles as individuals; and that most existing and historical governments have acted improperly insofar as they have utilized coercion for plunder, aggression, redistribution, and other purposes beyond the protection of individual liberty.
Methinks you're confusing Libertarians with some other group. Either that or deeply confused.
Hey, it would teach them statistics pretty quickly, right?
Tell that to the guy in this movie
WTF? You should have linked to Dune, not frigging Waterworld! Now go hand in your geek card.
Blasphemer. You linked to the 1984 Sting version of Dune!?!
Here. Have a nerd's Dune link... http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0142032/
This plan should be fine as long as we don't have any incompetent, egotistical, anal-retentiveness cowards who are in charging replacing faulty drive-plates in the ship's engine system. I mean what could go wrong?
Even that would be OK if we made sure that coward had a partner to look over his shoulder. Of course, if that partner were to somehow get himself tossed into stasis for a ship infraction leaving the incompetent coward to do the job himself, who knows where it would lead? The only hope then would be self-insemination of the last surviving human or reassembly of the dead by nano-bots. And that would just be silly.
Sorry - I should have credited that. Short story by Isaac Asimov dealing with the end of life everywhere written in 1956.
Here's the wiki for anyone who just wants the gist without reading all 5 or 6 pages: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Last_Question
Sorry, human or not we're all doomed. Deal with it.
The Last Question
i mean, why should it make any difference how many people share a common delusion. a fallacy is a fallacy regardless of how many people believe in the fallacy. should medical diagnostic criteria pay tribute to political correctness? whether you were socialized with irrational, factually unsupported beliefs by 5 people or 500 people, it's still a delusion. factual reality isn't dictated by majority opinion.
The problem is that "factual reality" is tough to pin down in some cases. It hasn't been that long ago that the idea that the Earth revolved around the Sun was only accepted by mentally ill subculture. It turns out (at least as far as we know) that the few were right and the many were wrong - The facts were simply too confusing and complicated to understand. If you told me that everything in the universe was comprised of weird little vibrating strings, I may think that you were mentally ill. But there are a bunch of people much more ingrained in the world of physics than I am that are actively pursuing that theory.
Sometimes common delusions are harmless (or even helpful - I'm convinced that if the world's religions had never been a benefit to society, they wouldn't exist). So if "factual reality isn't dictated by majority opinion", what is it determined by? Some super-smart elected committee? You? Me? Every man for himself? Do tell.
Stupid useful thing to do with a doomsday device? Easy. Give it a catchy title like "Positronic ray, capable of emitting pure anti-matter" and use it as a premise to encourage Jane Fonda to open a movie by doing a zero-G strip show. Then, get a band to name themselves after the inventor. That seems much more productive than destroying the world and it gives back to society more than making huge ransom demands. Everyone wins.
Indeed - Another soul has received his vin-dit and will soon become a part of our karass, with Cat's Cradle as our wampeter. Sure, Bokonism may be largely comprised of foma, but it's a welcome escape from the slashdot granfaloon.
The new-convert's guide
Well put. Persecuted, exploited, abused, but embraced within the cult and ridiculed, untrusted, and almost unwelcome outside the cult. That's gotta be a helluva way to live.
With only a pair of sentences, you made me pity Tom Cruise. Thank you.
I love Ice-9 because it keeps my drink cold.
I would recommend strongly against drinking anything kept cold by Ice-9, although it may keep your corpse looking its best.
On a related topic, the main redeeming value of The Recruit was that it turned me on to Cat's Cradle (they named their ludicrous super-infect-60-hz-power-turn-your-blender-against-you virus "Ice-9"). It was written 14 years before I was born and may have slipped by me otherwise.
Strangely, although mentioned on the Cat's Cradle wiki, The Recruit is missing from the Ice-9 In Popular Culture section. If I was more motivated, I'd add it...
Yep, then it melts and you go nine months without being able to use it. I think the analogy is perfect.
And yet people still build ski lodges/lifts because they believe (often correctly) that the informal, erratic, chaotic, unplanned snow will be sufficient to make it worth-while in spite of the dry-spells.
... to believe you're being persecuted & suppressed--just look at Tom Cruise.
Actually, if you look at how Scientology treats its members (especially the really valuable or potentially embarrassing ones), in all likelihood Tom Cruise is being persecuted & suppressed.
Bouncing a beam off of the lunar laser ranger demonstrates only that we (or more likely the underlings working for the alien overlords known as the Illuminati) planted the device on the moon. It does not prove that it was placed there during the supposed "Apollo" mission nor does it prove that man has ever escaped Earth's orbit or that the moon is in fact real rather than a sophisticated projection on the outside of our fishbowl. There's actually a documentary where OJ Simpson demonstrates how a similar hoax could be pulled off for a manned Mars landing.
(May the gods help us if anyone interprets the above as anything other than a goofy attempt at humor.)
Seriously, though, good for the Indians. Considering the $$ that the US has shot into space (development, production, etc), and the continued global interest in space exploration, this could be a very valuable market for them.